Perfect worlds : utopian fiction in China and the West / Douwe Fokkema.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fokkema, Douwe Wessel, 1931- author.

Contributor:

Thomassen, J. J. A., editor.

Ommen, Kasper van, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Utopias in literature.

Comparative literature--Western and Chinese.

Comparative literature.

Chinese fiction--History and criticism.

Chinese fiction.

Utopias.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (448 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Perfect Worlds is an extensive, comparative study of utopian narratives in both the East and the West. Douwe Fokkema provides an elegant argument about the human impulse to imagine new and better worlds, astutely observing that the utopian imagination thrives in the context of secularization. Fokkema also tracks the rise of dystopian narratives, invoking authors as diverse as Margaret Atwood and Lao She, and provides a cogent evaluation of the role of imagined worlds in both Chinese and Euro-American fiction. A shrewd comparison of cultures, as well as a vivid account of cross-cultural influence, this volume is a welcome addition to the scholarly discourse on utopias.

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. The Utopia of Thomas More

3. From Rational Eutopia to Grotesque Dystopia

4. Interlude: The Island Syndrome from Atlantis to Lanzarote and Penglai

5. Enlightenment Utopias

6. Orientalism: European Writers Searching for Utopia in China

7. Chinese Philosophers and Writers Constructing Their Own Utopias

8. Small-Scale Socialist Experiments, or "The New Jerusalem in Duodecimo"

9. Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? and Dostoevsky's Dystopian Foresight

10. When Socialist Utopianism Meets Politics

11. Bellamy's Solidarity and Its Feminist Mirror Image in Herland

12. Chinese Occidentalism: The Nostalgia for a Utopian Past Gives Way to the Idea of Progress

13. H. G. Wells and the Modern Utopia

14. Dystopian Fiction in the Soviet Union, Proletkult, and Socialist-Realist Utopianism

15. Mao Zedong's Utopian Thought and the Post-Mao Imaginative Response

16. Utopias, Dystopias, and Their Hybrid Variants in Europe and America since World War I

17. Concluding Observations

References

Subject Index

Index of Names.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 Jan 2021).

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International CC BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed October 10 2025)

ISBN:

1-003-70118-3

1-04-078741-X

1-283-33447-X

9786613334473

90-485-1486-X

9781003701187

OCLC:

766417699